governments. Aware that the chambers stood resolved on economy, Arista determined to retrench in the most rigid manner in order to diminish the enormous difference exhibited in the budget between income and expenditure, estimated at $8,275,000 and $26,000,000, respectively.[1] True, the latter figures were somewhat exaggerated to impress the congress and people with the necessity for assisting a government, which after a revision of the estimate proposed to reduce it as low as $10,683,000. To this end salaries of active employés were cut to an alarming extent, and those of passive servants still more.[2] But the pruning was uneven; and while looking for the most petty saving in certain directions with even harsh strictness, large sums were heedlessly squandered in others. Finding that the president would not entertain what Payno regarded as better methods, and that the legislative power refused to assist in covering the smaller and more pressing deficit still left, he resigned, and so did several of the following finance ministers, in rapid succession, as in cases before mentioned,[3] until it became difficult to find any
- ↑ Half of the revenue came from custom-house receipts, and of the expenditure, $10,867,293 were toward the public debt, and $7,284,529 toward the military department, as calculated by Piña y Cuevas in July 1851.
- ↑ 'Á las dos terceras partes el sueldo de los empleados en servicio activo, á tres cuartas el de las clases pasivas.' Rivera, Gob. de Méx., ii. 383. Arista required monthly statements from every department whereon to exercise his efforts at reduction.
- ↑ Payno was succeeded, Feb. 15th, by Ignacio Esteva of Vera Cruz, well known as a writer, and he in the following month by Aguirre, who adopted several of Payno's plans for revising the tariff and closing certain ports as costly and unreliable. He also proposed that the government be authorized to remove officials and close certain offices, for greater economy, to place a new tax on textile goods, to assume control of the three per cent mining tax, to transfer the Vera Cruz railway to a corporation, and to raise a loan of $5,500,000 for converting the interior debt, hypothecating, if necessary, church estates. Esteva had similar designs on this tempting property, but Arista was too much of a churchman, or too politic, to permit any such inroad. The journals, indeed, attacked the government for obsequiously assisting the church in collecting condemned books. The result was the tender of the portfolio to Lerdo de Tejada, the later famous right hand of Juarez. A mere survey of the disorder to be unravelled and the opposition to be encountered sufficed to make him step out again. None else offering to succeed, Yañez himself took charge in April, leaving the relations to Monasterio till a head for the cabinet was found in Mariano Macedo, a lawyer of repute. An appeal was made to the states for an exhibit of their finances, and these proving too poor, under
